Tablet: Personal Computer of the Year 2000?

In 1988, I was part of a (then) student team from the University of Illinois which won Apple's national essay competition to design the "Personal Computer of the Year 2000". This competition received national publicity, with celebrity judges at the final presentations in Cupertino. Articles extracted from our essay were widely read and discussed both inside Apple and around the world, appearing in print in articles in "Omni", "Communications of the ACM" and "Academic Computing" among other places. We believe that our ideas and essay had a not insignificant effect on the design of subsequent computers.

Well, the Year 2000 is now upon us, and it is time to look back and see how accurate our predictions were. Our design, "Tablet", in many ways anticipates current personal assistant devices such as the Palm Pilot, with of course some amusing hits and misses along the way. It would be very interesting to have a "Tablet" reunion early in 2000 to reunite as many of the seven team members as possible, both to look back at our earlier vision and ponder the personal computer of the year 2010.

A look back at 1988's computer of 2000 should also hold considerable popular interest, and attract the attention of the national media. I would be very happy to discuss this proposal with anyone -- please feel free to call me at 631-632-9026 or send skiena@cs.sunysb.edu I have plenty of material documenting the competition, including the slides of our original presentation.

Below, I give links to three relevant essays and other resources:

• Tablet: Personal Computer of the Year 2000 -- This is the essay which won the competition, which also appeared in Communications of the ACM 31 (June 1988) 638-646, with excerpts in Omni 10-9 (June 1988) 118,126 and EOS (in Dutch translation) 7-1 (January 1990) 72-73.
• Academic Computing in the Year 2000 -- This is a separate essay on the educational implications of Tablet, which appeared in Academic Computing (May/June 1988) 7-12, 62-65.
• How We Designed the Personal Computer of the Year 2000 -- An unpublished (as best that I know) essay by two of our team members written in 1988 telling the whole story. Remember we were just graduate students back then..
• Archives: Designing the Personal Computer of the Year 2000 -- A view at the Apple competition written by Jeff Popyack, the faculty advisor of the Drexel team.
• An annotated bibliography on the history of tablet/pen-based computing, by J.R. Ward.

The release of the Apple IPad renewed interest in our Tablet design. Links to press coverage are below -- including the New York Times:

• University of Illinois: 150 Years and Beyond: Steven Skiena The News-Gazette, Champaign IL, March 9, 2019.
• Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Origins of The Tablet Alex Lux, Computer History Museum, December 17, 2014.
• Tablet computer: an idea whose time has finally come... Engineering at Illinois, January 27, 2010.
• SBU Computer Science Professor was part of College Team that Designed an Early Version of Apple's iPad Tablet Computer Stony Brook News, January 27, 2010.
• Apple's New Device Looks Like a Winner. From 1988. The New York Times, January 28, 2010.
• Jury's out on iPad's impact on media consumption Newsday, January 28, 2010.
• Apple iPad Doesn't Fall Far from the Tree, Stony Brook Press, February 17, 2010.
• Which Steve invented the iPad?, Bit-Player, March 30, 2010.
• Computer of 2000 Looks a lot like the iPad, The Californian, April 3, 2010.
• The iPad. of 2000. As Envisioned in 1988, Technologizer, May 14, 2010.
• Pretty good predictions on tablet computing from UI scientists - except timing, The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana IL), May 20, 2010.
• Tablet: personal computer of the year 2000, Communications of the ACM, 31, 638-648, June 1988.